Preserving a Black & Decker poker

April 15, 2016 by Troy W 5 Comments

I know what you are thinking  and , yes that Black & Decker.

Its old advertising pipe given away by company’s to promote their products. This is my third advertising poker ( ill show pics of the other two and end of post ). From the style of the stem they all date from roughly the 1920’s to early 1930’s . I have seen only one other Black & Decker advertising poker . It was the same time i won my other two on auction . The bids were pretty high so i passed on it so i could make reasonable bids on the other two. My other’s were made by and stamped LHS. I suspect this one is too even though its not stamped by a maker as its identical in size and style as them.

I stumbled on this one in a online vintage store for really cheap but only had one picture, after contacting the seller she said it would be till next day til she could send me anymore pictures. It looked good from the one picture. Fearful it would get purchased i went ahead took a gamble and got it right away.

Here is the picture as it was listed.

The pipe arrived a few days later and it was in no need of major repair’s but had took a lot of dings on the rim and bottom of bowl where the large Black &Decker seal is.

I hate to throw the word ‘rare” around but i would consider this  a rare pipe. These kind of pipes were give-a-away’s, they were smoked ,abused and tossed.

Since there was no major repair’s i decided to preserve  what i have and to do as less to it as possible. Being extremely careful around the Black& Decker stamping’s. Without the Black & Decker stamping’s it’s just a plain old poker.

The cake came out easy with a little sanding. The type of stinger it has kept the shank on the pipe very clean so it took very little cleaning .

I steamed the rim  with a iron and damp cloth to help take out some of the dings.Sorry for the blurry picture with the iron. I  did go over the bottom of the poker very LIGHTLY as well. i did not want to steam it too much as it might raise the stamping’s.

I gave the rim and pipe a light  scrub with green pad  and mineral oil, the switched to some worn out 2500 grit paper . Staying off the stamping’s as much as possible.

The mineral oil helped bring some life back to the stamping’s.

Although the  tube stinger helped keep the shank clean it really dirty’s the inside of the stem . The stem was clogged pretty bad. After soaking in 91% i would take out the stem every so often and work a cleaner through it. I repeated this several times. I was finally able to gentle pull out the stinger. These old tube stingers are very thin and fragile so be PATIENT. If you try to force it out with pliars and a rag you WILL crush it.

After the alcohol bath i then gave it a soak in Oxy Clean  taking it out every so often and give it a scrub with a green pad. Be sure and run cleaners through it as well as it pulls oxidation from inside as well. if you don’t clean it out when you are done it will taste horrible when you smoke it.When i completely done i run some 91% through it again with a pipe cleaner.

I had to fill in one tooth mark that was too deep to file out.

After tooth marks were filled out i gave stem a sanding with 500 – 1000 grit over file marks, then whole stem got 1200 up to 2500  grit. I gave the stinger a gentle cleaning with 000 steel wool.

Bowl and stem back together with one rub down with mineral oil . After drying its ready for stem buffing and all over wax.

Finished preservation of the Black&Decker poker.

Here is the stamping’s first as they are what makes this pipe.

Notice on edge  “Bert” is scratched into the pipe. Seems Bert liked to bang his pipe a lot in the ashtray. Bad Bert!

It turned out pretty decent considering how many dings were present.

The pipe is also marked B&D  Imported Briar on the shank .

The pipe has some pretty nice straight grain.

Its a great smoker.It smokes much cooler than i would have thought with most of the cake removed. I elected to smoke it without the tube stinger as it has a much easier and better draw.

I did a little research and found out this information on  Black&Decker’s early days.

• 1917 – Received a patent for the pistol grip and trigger switch on its drill. The first factory was opened in Towson; the company is still headquartered there today.
• 1928 – Acquired Van Dorn Electric Tool Company of Cleveland, Ohio.
• 1936 – Common stock begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

This is about the same time period as this poker.

Black &Decker also had other promotional things geared toward  tobacco users. Including ashtray’s , Zippo’s ,match  book covers etc..

Here is some pictures of my other advertising pokers. Again these are made and stamped by LHS

Bird Archer poker. They made a additive for  water used in steam locomotives .

LHS  Warner Sand Gravel Lime Products 

Well i hope you enjoyed looking at my old early 20th century advertising pokers.

Till next time,

Good smokes to you.